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Chevron, Toyota announce alliance on hydrogen technology

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I would argue that battery electric propulsion is not going to be the answer for every application. Instead there will evolve a variety of different types of propulsion systems. Battery powered vehicles probably will predominate in urban areas and in compact densely populated countries. In sparsely populated places where habitations are very far apart, places like Australia, the western US and big parts of Canada, they won't work. Battery enthusiasts never figure in things like how much charge is used up just heating the batteries in the winter (over half the charge), combined with chain requirements that limit car speed to 60kph or so (any faster and the chains can come off and damage the car) and long distances mean batteries will run out of charge before you make the next charging station. In Australia's outback cattle stations with petrol bowsers are 200-225 km apart, sometimes more. There are some outback dirt roads with no services for 1500 km. Battery powered vehicles are not the answer. Long haul heavy trucking, especially Australia's huge road trains, ocean shipping and heavy construction equipment are going to need something other than batteries to power them. Local ferries and coastal shipping might find battery power useful (some Norwegian ferry operators are experimenting with Li battery power) but the big container ships, dry bulk carriers and tankers crossing the worlds oceans are going to need a different mode of propulsion than battery power. Batteries are not going to power a 150,000 ton container ship at 27 knots from LA to Shanghai to meet the 11 day schedule that route is built on. These are areas where there are opportunities for hydrogen, methane and ammonia powered engines or hydrogen powered fuel cells to succeed.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

The elephant in the room is battery weight.

Don't ignore the huge turds that elephant leaves behind in the form of all the hazardous waste created manufacturing and disposing of those batteries.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

"Battery electric vehicles are significantly cheaper and more advanced than Fuel Cell vehicles"

Or so you say.

In fact they're cheaper and easier to manufacture, as they have less parts.

Fact well documented information widely accessible to all who want it.

"Battery electric vs. hydrogen fuel cell vehicles: which are the better zero-emission cars?

EV manufacturers are taking the world by storm, but some industry leaders believe hydrogen is the future"

"https://www.theweek.co.uk/electric-cars/101196/hydrogen-fuel-cell-vs-battery-electric-cars-which-are-better"

1 ( +1 / -0 )

While Toyota has a long history of green innovation with their Prius lineup of vehicles, with Chevron I worry that they will buy into the hydrogen technology just to be better able to kill it.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Forgot to say the grid capacity is a problem in advanced countries, for the rest of the world forget it!

0 ( +0 / -0 )

BEV’s are in no way either green or sustainable, there environmental footprint from mining through to manufacture is highly destructive (not to mention the modern slavery/child labour/funding armed militia involved in some major areas of supply), the serious range limitations, time to charge, almost total lack of sufficient grid capacity to cope with the charging load if replacing all the ICE vehicles currently on the road, the weight of the battery wasting much of the energy just lugging it around, the enormous cost of replacing the battery long before the vehicle needs replacing (cheaper to replace the vehicle so increasing the waste/carbon footprint/environmental damage/resource consumption) and the difficulty in recycling the highly toxic chemicals used in them.

So yep BEV’s are the obvious choice.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

the reason many people 5-10 years ago thought that Fuel Cell vehicles could be better than BEVs was due in large part to the refueling time issue.

I think there are other reasons. One is the issue of handling increased demand on the electricity network from recharging electric cars. Another is the overall environmental impact of producing and disposing of batteries versus fuel cells.

I think we still have some way to go before a generally acceptable "best approach" is established.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Elon Musk was right about Toyota. Japanese dinosaurs are too dumb to see the future.

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

HillclimberToday  01:05 pm JST

BEVs are cheaper and more advanced than Fuel Cell vehicles. What I mean by this is that the electric motors, batteries and other components necessary for BEVs have seen far more development than those for Fuel Cell vehicles over the past decade and the costs for batteries, in particular, have fallen significantly and continue to drop.

Consider that the 2021 Nissan Leaf (BEV) has a starting price of $32,620 (excluding government subsidies) and has a driving range of 150 miles on a charge. Meanwhile, the 2021 Toyota Mira (Fuel Cell) starts at $49,500. And as someone who has driven both vehicles, I can tell you the Nissan Leaf has a more powerful motor and drives much better.

Regarding the stepping stone issue, yes...the reason many people 5-10 years ago thought that Fuel Cell vehicles could be better than BEVs was due in large part to the refueling time issue. However, this was based on a narrow view of how people actually fuel up their vehicles. For people who don't know any better, of course a 5-min refueling time sounds much better than 30 minutes or several hours. But this is not how BEV owners actually refuel their vehicles. The vast majority of EV owners charge their vehicles at home, when they aren't using the vehicles. It really doesn't matter whether it takes 5 minutes or 5 hours because it only takes a few seconds to plug/unplug the vehicles.

Really, the bigger issue than charging time has been range anxiety over how far you can drive between charges. Most of today's EVs come with 200 miles plus of driving range, far more than most people need for a single day. Furthermore, there is a growing network of DC fast charging stations around the world for people who occasionally might need a quick charge during a long driving day or road trip.

Hydrogen refueling stations are much more expensive to build than even DC fast charging stations which can charge at 50kW, adding ~140km of driving range in 30 minutes. And EV owners have found that it is quite feasible even during road trips to plug into a fast charging station and refuel their vehicles while they eat lunch or have a cup of coffee.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

This is throwing good money after bad. The race for clean vehicle technologies is already over and Hydrogen lost. Battery electric vehicles are significantly cheaper and more advanced than Fuel Cell vehicles today and the gap is only getting wider each year. Ultimately, the nail in the coffin for hydrogen is the fact that the round trip efficiency converting electricity (from grid) to hydrogen and then hydrogen back to electricity (via fuel cell in the vehicles) will never exceed 25-30%. Meanwhile battery electric vehicles are 85-90% efficient (grid to battery to wheels).

This means that even if fuel cell vehicles are able to make technological leaps and catch up to battery electric vehicles in price and performance, it'll always cost 3-4x as much per km to drive a hydrogen vehicle than a battery electric. At 11 yen per kWh, it'll cost around 370 yen to drive 100km with a battery electric vehicle, but around 1250 yen to drive 100km with a hydrogen vehicle. That reality is never going to change. Hydrogen has lost the ball game.

-4 ( +2 / -6 )

The shift to hydrogen is a cynical move to keep the fossil fuels industry going. It has a place, but not in cars.

Hydrogen capture is a joke. Sweeping the dust the rug.

PR firms hired by the oil and gas industry have already employed the cigarette industry playbook to normalize it.

The play is to claim its green hydrogen (which is a mind bending waste of green energy to make another type of energy). By doing so they get subsidy to set up a hydrogen infrastructure which will later be filled with hydrogen from fossil fuels.

The cost of that new infrastructure is insanely high as they can’t use the old oil and gas pipes - they corrode with hydrogen in them. Crack - boom - Hindenburg.

Don’t fall for it.

-6 ( +1 / -7 )

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